


our house swept of cobwebs

by noonesson



Category: Halloween Movies - All Media Types
Genre: But Laurie does have a brief freak out, Halloween 2018, Laurie-centric, Original Character - Freeform, Original Character Death(s), There’s no actual incest, halloween 2007, kind of but work with me here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 06:52:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17844518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noonesson/pseuds/noonesson
Summary: Laurie returns to a home and life broken into, again.





	our house swept of cobwebs

The kitchen is the heart of the home. 

Her mother used to always tell her as such, while yammering on and on about her nice granite counter tops, and her stainless steel appliances, how nicely her new refurbished butcher’s block matched the industrial rolling island she installed, just for special occasions. Most times, Laurie would just tune her out, smile and nod, smile and nod. 

She stared now at the congealing pools of red splattered across the dark brown planks. Thin liquid trails slowly traveled between the crevices of the reclaimed wood, sinking deeply into the grain until the butcher block was dyed a deep red.  _Mom always wanted cherry-stained plank._ The thought pulled a hysterical giggle from some forsaken part of her soul.

The blood dripped down from the counter and into a growing puddle beneath her feet. She took a step back, leaving bloody footprints away from the mangled mess of flayed flesh that trailed across dainty white floors. Her brother’s work, clearly. Animalistic, Laurie would have once called it. Rabid. Primal.

Wrinkled, weathered hands clutched stiffly at torn fabric, fiercely, defensively, even in the throes of death. Her gaze traveled up stiff, pale fingers, following familiar slopes of veiny crevices, stopping at a single golden ring, its luster dulled by drying red flakes. She froze.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, resignation heavy on her tongue.

Glassy sightless eyes gleamed white in the darkness, rolled back into empty caverns. Stared blankly where they once twinkled with stars, just for her.

Laurie stared back. Years ago, a thousand tears would have stained her reddened cheeks. She would have fallen onto her knees, crawled through the shallow pools of blood, stained her hands and arms just to cradle her dear husband’s body against her chest.  She would have screamed until there was no more air in her lungs, until her throat grew hoarse and broken and she had no more voice left to howl.

That was before she was wrung of all tears, of all fear, of any fucks left to give. Quietly, she leaned down, caressed her husband’s tender cheek before gently running her finger tips across waxy eyelids, closing them shut. Her hands drifted down sharp draw of his chin, the cold slope of his neck, until finally the pads of her fingers brushed across skinned knuckles. Her throat tightened, constricting and struggling to draw breath even as she forced herself to stifle a long suffering sigh. His skin remained frigid, stiffening into leather beneath her touch, and it was all she could do to tear her hand away before standing up straight and wiping her hands across her old denim jeans. The calm that clung to her was stagnate, unbearable. She could feel it fester and eat away at her from the inside out, but what else could she do?

The world she lived in was not her own, and it hadn’t been for a very long time.

A trail of dark droplets dripped across the white tile of the kitchen and then onto the dark hardwoods of the dining room beyond. The room was pitch black, no light to illuminate much more than barely defined silhouettes of a long table and tilted chairs. Laurie dug into her buckskin jacket pocket, pulling out a packet of smokes and a lighter. She stared intently into the dark room, never dropping her gaze even while placing a cigarette between her lips and flipping the lighter open with a soft metallic _clink._ The small flame spilled the faintest glow across the kitchen, cutting long and sharp shadows along the floor and counters.

She brought the lighter closer, watching as the fire bit and blackened the cigarette’s brown, tapered wrapping. The flame danced in the dark, leaving drapes of shadow and sluices of light dripping down the slope of her nose and curling beneath the hollows of her eyes. The heat of the fire was faint, but tears dampened her lashes anyhow. She ignored it, and drank in a long, indulgent puff.

Smoke drifted into her lungs, the thick silver stench almost strong enough to overpower the penny-salt scent of copper clinging to the air. She closed her eyes and took another drag.  There was little left to do, except to keep moving.

She didn’t know what she expected, following her brother in here. For so long, she believed him incapable of rhyme or reason, that his motivations were based on pure impulse, a compulsion borne of maligned lizard brain instincts to hunt, to kill.

 _To protect,_ Loomis told her long ago, even as his spidery fingers carefully slipped a magazine into its well. If Laurie let herself, she could bring herself to believe it. That her brother’s thirst for blood sprung from a desire to quiet demons that, however real, possessed him with cruel and unbreakable torment. That her brother thought himself protecting _her_ from those very same entities, in whatever convoluted logic his cold and murderous mind took.

It was easy to believe, and it was tempting, _tempting_ to take even the slightest bit of comfort from it, to slide back into pockets of doubt, of terrible, tender hands running calloused, grimy fingers through sweat-soaked hair, of a yellowed photograph reverently tucked into a bloodstained jumpsuit.

It was easy, until she let her gaze wander back down to Robert, until nausea drowned her mind with visions of Annie heaving silent sobs, dried out by hours and hours of screaming, weakly grasping at any wisp of life while slipping on smears of her own entrails. Laurie closed her eyes and quietly counted backwards.

 _Five._ Her eyes settled on the specks of blood spelling out a deliberate trail into the dark, She tilted her head, assessing the path her brother had lovingly laid out for her. She walked slowly beside it, dragging fingers against wet plank and stepping over a corpse long cold.

 _Four._ A memory of cool metal slipping down the third calloused knuckle, warm hands rubbing thin skin across the bump of sharp, frail bones, slipping into the gaps between her fingers and holding her still. A mouth swallowing her fears, peck by sweet peck, A longing gaze burning with a fierce love and devotion, razing down the world until only it was only her, until the fear that he kissed away began sloshing its way back into the pit of her stomach.

Laurie pursed her lips over the cigarette, taking in another drag before entering the dining room.

 _Three._ Finding her husband butchered like a pig and arranged like a cheap prop at the state county fair tore a hole deep into her heart, but Laurie was honest with herself. It shocked her in the way the buzzing of an alarm clock did in the morning. Sudden, jolting, but after pulling yourself from a dream, expected.

The world she lived in wasn’t her own, and her life was a prop for a long and sick game. It took her what seemed a lifetime of escaping her brother, but she learned her lesson. If Michael had any demons, he had long wrestled them into submission for his own deranged amusement, tormenters turned players in an endless play. Michael fucking loved putting on a show.

 _Two._ The last light of the moonlight wisped into a dull silver glint behind her, and the blood trail all but vanished in the darkness. She could see the vapid silhouette of her ornery wooden table toppled over, a splintered mess of antique chairs scattered across the floor, the glint of broken glass that gleamed dully from her desecrated china cabinet, and sprinkled towards her bedroom.

 _One._ Ashes burned against the calloused tips of her fingers, and she flicked them away. She knew this game all too well.

“Michael,” Laurie called out. Her words felt cool and even, like chewing on ice. She took another step forward, She waited a long moment, taking another drag.

Briefly, she thought back to the last time her life wasn’t measured by increments of “Michael”. It was the October of her senior year. Two days before Halloween. She had been in the library with Annie, cramming for a chemistry test that was just around the corner. The day was so clear in her mind, the musky scent of aging books, warm autumn light drifting through wide-paned windows. Head pulsing with the stress of numbers and grades and college, of what to do with life, of what to do with the light flutter of her heart, the breath that Annie could steal with just a glance of her dewy brown eyes, the bitter taste in her mouth that spread with each mention of Annie’s boyfriend.

A crease dug deep within her brow. Her jaw tightened, and the bland taste of paper and nicotine burst across her tongue.

The worries before Michael had been luxuries, teenage anxiety that nagged incessantly and deemed every broken nail a disaster, and every jumbled conversation the sunset of a social life. The worries that came right after Michael were that of necessity, of panic and terror that slumbered that threatened to bloom at every waking hour. It was like being tossed into a river of cold piss and shit, and then she was wide awake. Awake and alert, eyes and ears wide, wide open, death a wet nose sniffing beneath your door rather than a far-off myth that only happened to the old, or to strangers, or to bad people. Once you turn that shit on, you can’t turn it off again.

“I know you’re in here!” she said with a snap. “There’s probably some dead friend propped up in the bedroom.”

Michael always had a penchant for the theatrical, after all.

“Joke’s on you though,” she muttered with a huff. “I don’t have any friends.”

The tin echo of metal bouncing across glassy tiles clattered into her ears, and she looked up. A faint flutter in her chest left her silently cursing. She took a cautious step towards the corridor, peering into the dim room until her vision became grainy and full of static. There was nothing to be seen, but she knew better than to trust that her brother wasn’t there, waiting for his grand entrance.

Her heart skipped a beat, then two. A sickness crept up her throat, sliding across her tongue, making her mouth parched and dry. She licked her lips suddenly finding them chapped, It was in moments like these, the ones that lived in between the gaps of her forcibly controlled breaths, that lurked in the long stretches of staring down endless black corridors, that Laurie let herself embrace that third kind of worry. The ones that came in after the luxury, and after the necessity.

In the times before Michael, Laurie would measure moments by how long she could wait. Counting down seconds until the school bell rang, counting down minutes until Annie would run up to her and walk home with her. Counting down the days to her 16th birthday, or to the next holiday break. Every minute she waited out was a minute towards a treat, a small respite, or a big date.

Time was still measured in countdowns, this time through drugged, tasteless, colorless moments that all blended together into lucid dreams pin-pricking the base of your cortex, making you a little happy, a little sad, but ready to wake up. Constant vigilance meant watching the night for the monsters that could slip inside your home through the smallest of cracks. It meant keeping one eye to the backdoor while hosting a party, and smiling at a girl while thumbing the hunting knife you slipped between your thighs. It meant turning your backyard into a shooting range, and saying “I do” while searching for a white mask hiding in a church crowd.

The past twenty years had been a life of cold and muted dread, and she only really felt herself when she knew he was there, when he shifted from a cerebral specter into a flesh and blood monster. Her fists clenched in denial, her nails digging into the skin of her palms as she followed rabbit trail laid bare in her mind. There was some ember of longing and anticipation that burned hot in her core. Not love or affection of any sort—though Laurie knew that Michael would see it as nothing less, a hard won prize from years of performative brotherhood.

It was…familiarity, and it was relief.

A creak in the floorboards. Ash burned reddened welts down bony slopes. One last puff, and the cigarette was crushed onto the floor beneath heavy boots.

A hand curled around her neck. Calloused, rough, sticky palms dragged down the nape of her neck, fingers twitching pressures against her skin, unsure whether to cradle or to choke. His hands were big the way he was big everywhere, the way the blade hidden beneath that grimy jumpsuit was large and flashy and imposing.

Here they were again, and here they would be for the next thousand lifetimes to come.

When she spoke, the words felt flat and unimpressed upon her tongue.

“Hello, Michael.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really imagine this taking place specifically in any one Halloween canon. I'd best describe it if Halloween 2007 was in the same continuation as Halloween 2018. White Horse Mom is dead to me.
> 
> Anyways, if Michael wasn't a psycho killer obsessed with his sisters, he'd probably be a theater nerd. That's the entire point of this story. No, really.
> 
> Someday I'll post something with like, an actual plot


End file.
